brightest.
His torpor was generally profound, but he would sometimes discourse
incoherently for a long while in his sleep. At six he would suddenly
compose himself, even in the midst of an animated narrative or of
earnest discussion, and he would lie buried in entire forgetfulness,
in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he would suddenly
start up, and rubbing his eyes with great violence, and passing his
fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once into a
vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own
composition or from the works of others, with a rapidity and an energy
that were often quite painful. During the period of his occultation I
took tea, and read or wrote without interruption. He would sometimes
sleep for a shorter time, for about two hours, postponing for the like
period the commencement of his retreat to the rug, and rising with
tolerable punctuality at ten, and sometimes, though rarely, he was
able entirely to forego the accustomed refreshment."

After supper, which Shelley would take upon awaking at ten, the two
friends would talk and read together until two o'clock.

XVI

THE DEATH OF SHELLEY

In the Protestant cemetery at Rome one can find in an obscure place a
plain stone bearing record of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and these lines
from Shakspere's Tempest:

Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

And this is the story of how Shelley happens to have a memorial in the
Roman cemetery:

Shelley was a revolutionist in religion and politics, and
revolutionists are seldom popular at home. Shelley's lyric poetry is
unsurpassed, but his theories in some respects will never meet with
the approval of common-sense humanity. England proved uncomfortable
and so he left his country to live in other lands. In 1822 we find him
with his family and a Mr. and Mrs. Williams in Casa Magni, a Roman
villa in a cove on the bay of Spezzia. Here the poet and his friends
became very fond of sailing in a boat which had been made for them.
The boat, which they called the Ariel, was twenty-eight feet long and
eight feet broad, and this with the assistance of a lad they learned
to manage fairly well. To Shelley, whose health had been failing, the
out-of-door life gave renewed vigor.

On the eighth of July, Shelley and Williams, accompanied by a
sailor-lad, left the harbor of Leghorn to go home to their wives, fr